Tide Knot

by Helen Dunmore

“Yeah. Me too.”

  “Did you pray as well?”

  “Yes. Every night for a long time.”

  “But nothing happened.”

  “No.”

  “You know what the story says that the rainbow is? The Noah story, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a sign that there’ll never be another flood like the one that drowned the world.”

  “Hey, Con, I forgot to tell you. I met a girl called Rainbow.”

  But Conor isn’t listening. He’s shading his eyes and staring into the distance, out to sea. At first I think he’s looking for surfers, but then he grabs my arm. “There! Over there by the rock! Did you see her?”

  “Who? Rainbow?” I ask, like an idiot.

  “Elvira,” he says, as if that’s the obvious, only answer. As if the one person anyone could be looking for would be Elvira.

  He never talked about her. Never even said her name. But she must have been in his mind all the time, since the last time he spoke to her. That was just after Roger and his dive buddy Gray were almost killed when they were diving at the Bawns.

  I remember how Conor and Elvira talked to each other, once we’d got Roger and Gray safely into the boat. Conor was in the boat, leaning over the side, and Elvira was in the water. They looked as if there wasn’t anyone else in the world. So intent on each other. And then Elvira sank back into the water and vanished, and we took the boat back to land.

  “I can’t see Elvira,” I say. “I can’t see anything.”

  “There. Follow where I’m pointing. Not there—there.

  No, you’re too late. She’s gone.”

  “Are you sure, though, Conor? Was it really Elvira?”

  “It was her. I know it was her.”

  “It could have been part of a rock.”

  “It wasn’t a rock. It was her.”

  “Or maybe a surfer—”

  “Saph, believe me, it was Elvira. I couldn’t mistake her for anyone else.”

  I still don’t think it was. I have no sense that the Mer are close. Not Faro, or his sister, or any of the Mer. But in Conor’s mind a glimpse of a rock or a seal or a buoy turns into a glimpse of Elvira.

  “I keep nearly seeing her,” says Conor in frustration, “but then she always vanishes. I’m sure it was her this time.”

  “You can’t be sure, Conor.”

  “She was out in the bay earlier on, when the dolphins came.”

  “Are you certain? I didn’t see anything.”

  “She was there; I know she was. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned, she was gone. I expect it was because Mal and his dad were there. Elvira wouldn’t risk them seeing her.”

  “Do you think they could?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it’s only us who can see the Mer. Because of what Granny Carne said, you remember, about our blood being partly Mer. Maybe even if Faro or Elvira swam right up to the boat, Mal and his dad still wouldn’t see them.”

  I remember the words Faro said to me: Open your eyes. Maybe that doesn’t just mean opening your eyelids and focusing. Maybe it’s to do with being willing to see things even if your mind is telling you that they can’t possibly be real—

  “Of course they’d see Elvira if she was there,” Conor argues. “You’re making the Mer sound like something we’ve imagined. Elvira’s as real as—as real as…Saph, why do you think she’s hiding? Why won’t she talk to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I don’t think I should say any more. Our roles seem to be reversing. Suddenly I’m the sensible, practical one, and Conor is the dreamer, longing for Ingo. No. Be honest, Sapphire. It’s not Ingo he’s longing for; it’s Elvira. And maybe that’s what is making me so sensible and practical—

  “We’d better go home, Conor. It’s starting to rain.”

  “Saph, you said it!” Conor swings round to face me, smiling broadly. “You said it at last. I had a bet with myself how long it would be before you did.”

  “Said what? What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t you hear yourself? You said ‘home.’”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’m just taking Sadie out, Mum!” I call up the stairs. It’s Sunday night. Mum and Roger are painting the baseboards in Mum’s bedroom. They have stripped off the dingy cabbage rose wallpaper, and now the bedroom walls are bare to the plaster. Our landlady says we can decorate as much as we like, and I’m not surprised. Her paint and wallpaper are not only hideous but also old and covered in marks. When we got here, Mum wanted to paint all the rooms white.

  “It’s a new start for all of us, Sapphy!”

  I’ve painted my room blue and green, so that it looks like the inside of a wave. Our landlady, Mrs. Eagle, has been up to see it, and she says it is ’andsome. Mrs. Eagle is old. Her name doesn’t sound at all Cornish, but that’s because she married a man who came to St. Pirans from upcountry during the war, she says. He died long ago. She must be about eighty, and she owns six houses in St. Pirans, all of them full of cabbagy wallpaper, I expect. But the rent is low, Mum says, and that’s all that matters. Rents in St. Pirans are terrible.

  Mum appears at the top of the stairs. “It’s late, Sapphy. Can’t Conor take Sadie out?”

  “He’s doing his mathematics homework.”

  This is strictly true, but I haven’t asked him anyway, because I want to go out on my own. St. Pirans is different when the streets are empty, and it’s dark, and there’s no one at all on the wide stretch of Polquidden Beach. I feel as if I can breathe then.

  “All right, but don’t be long. Let me know when you’re back.”

  Lucky it’s Mum, not Roger. Although he hasn’t known me very long, Roger is disturbingly quick to grasp when he is being told only a part of the truth or indeed none of the truth at all.

  The wind has died down over the weekend. It’s a cold, still night, and the air smells of salt and seaweed. The moon is almost full, and it is riding clear of a thick shoal of clouds. I decide to take Sadie away from the streetlights onto the beach, where she can chase moon shadows.

  I head down to Polquidden. The bay is full. It’s high tide. An exceptionally high tide. It’s not due to turn until eleven tonight, but look how far it’s come up the beach already. It reminds me of the autumn equinox, when the water came up right over the slipway and the harbor road.

  There is still a strip of white sand left, but the water is rising quickly, like a cat putting out one paw and the next. Something else that surprises me is how quickly the sea has calmed. Surely the water should be much rougher than this after all the wind yesterday and today? The stillness is eerie.

  Sadie doesn’t want to go down the steps. She puts her head down, with her legs braced apart.

  “It’s all right, Sadie, you’re allowed on the beach now, remember?” I give a gentle tug on her leash, but she won’t budge.

  “Sadie, you’re being very annoying.”

  I am longing to be down on the sand. I pull a little harder, but she digs in her claws. I don’t want to force her.

  “All right then, Sadie. Wait here a minute.”

  I loop her leash around a metal post. Sadie whines. There’s enough moonlight for me to see her face. She is pleading with me to stay, but I’m going to harden my heart this time. I’ve got to go down to the beach. The urge is so powerful that I ignore Sadie’s voice, give her a quick hug, say, “Stay, Sadie!” and then hurry down the steps.

  There’s a sound of running water on my right. It’s the stream that tumbles down the rocks onto the beach. Children play in it and make dams in summer. The water glints in the moonlight as it pours over the inky black rock. The sea is still rising. Why does it look so powerful tonight, even though there are no wild waves, no foam, no pounding of surf?

  There’s not much beach left. I walk to my right, toward a spine of rocks that juts from the glistening sand. A wave flows forward, and I leap up onto the rocks to keep my trainers dry. But I
’m still not high enough, because now the water is swirling at my heels. I scramble up again onto dry rock and look back. The bay is full of moonlight and water. The sea is lapping around my rock already.

  Sapphire, you idiot, you’re cut off! But it’s not very deep yet. Even in the dark I’ll be able to wade back easily before the tide comes in any farther. I’ll just take my trainers off. But I’d better be quick; look how the water’s rising—

  “You’ll have to swim,” says a voice behind me. I start so violently that I almost fall off the rock. A strong hand grasps my wrist.

  “It’s me, Sapphire.”

  “Faro.”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly I’m angry with him. “Why don’t you and Elvira come and see us in daylight, like you used to?” I ask sharply. “Conor keeps looking for Elvira. Where is she?”

  “Here and there,” he says, with a gleam of laughter in his voice. “Around and about. Just like me.”

  “Don’t laugh at me!” I say angrily. “I hate it when people are here one moment and then they just—”

  I swallow the words I was going to say.

  “I didn’t disappear,” says Faro seriously. “I won’t ever disappear. I promise you. But in St. Pirans it’s more difficult for you to see us. Even at night it’s not easy. There are so many people. And besides, St. Pirans is not our place.”

  “I know that,” I say gloomily. “It’s not mine either.”

  “But you’re human. That’s what humans do, isn’t it? They crowd together in towns and cities. They love it when everything is covered over with concrete and tarmac.”

  Faro brings out the word “tarmac” with pride. He loves to impress me with his knowledge of the human world.

  “You’ve been talking to the gulls again. Do you even know what tarmac is, Faro? Or concrete?”

  “Of course I do. It’s stuff that humans pour on the earth to stop it breathing.”

  The moonlight is strong enough for me to see his face clearly. “Faro, have you grown older?”

  I know that their time runs differently from ours. Is it possible that Faro has grown a year when I’ve grown only a few months? Or maybe he only looks older because of the expression on his face.

  “You can enter Ingo in darkness, even from here, Sapphire. You already know that.”

  A tremor of fear and anticipation runs through me. “But I can’t come to Ingo now, Faro. Mum’s expecting me back with Sadie. If I’m away more than half an hour at most, she’ll go crazy.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. Time is hardly moving at all tonight.” He says it casually, as if saying that a boat is hardly moving across the water.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I say. It’s a fortunate night, Sapphire. Come to Ingo now, and you’ll be back almost before you’ve gone. Look up at the moon.”

  I stare up at the moon. The clouds look as if they are flying away from its bright surface. Moonlight bathes my face with silver.

  “You’re already in Ingo, Sapphire,” says Faro.

  He is right. Deep in my heart, I’ve already left the Air. The powerful, silent swell of the tide is covering my feet, my knees, my waist. The next pulse of water lifts me from the rock and swallows me into the sea.

  Into Ingo. I let out my breath, and it hardly hurts at all. I am breathing without breathing, my body absorbing oxygen from the rich water. My hair flows upward, then swirls down around my face. I push it aside. Ingo. I am in Ingo again, just as I was two nights ago. There’s a path of moonlight striking down deep into the water. I plunge forward and follow it.

  How strongly I can swim in Ingo. My strokes are far more powerful than anything I can do in the Air. Below me, moonlight catches the glisten of the white sand on the seabed. The water doesn’t feel cold. It feels like—it feels like…

  Like home. Like the place where I am meant to be. I open my eyes wide and turn my head, and there is Faro swimming alongside me. The underwater moonlight shines on his tail.

  “Look!” He points down. There’s a shadowy hulk, half buried in the seabed. It’s not a reef, or a dead whale, or anything that belongs to Ingo. It’s something that belongs to the Air. Metal. Yes, that’s what it is. A metal ship, half rotted away with rust, sailing to nowhere.

  “I know what that is,” I say. “It’s the wreck of the Ballantine. You can see her funnels from the beach at low tide.”

  “The wind drove her onshore, and she was broken up,” says Faro. “We called and called to warn the sailors, but they couldn’t hear us.”

  “Faro, the wreck happened seventy years ago. Why do you always talk about history as if you were there?”

  “Open your mind, Sapphire. Let’s talk to each other like we did last summer.” He saw my memories, and I saw his. That’s what the Mer can do, because Mer minds are not quite separate from one another, as human minds are.

  “Do you want to see what happened?” asks Faro. He floats close to me. “Look at the Ballantine, Sapphire.”

  I gaze into the shadowy depths. We could swim down with a few strong strokes and touch the jagged metal sides of the drowned ship.

  I don’t want to. The wreck scares me. It must be terrifying to be driven ashore, helpless, caught by storm and tide. To know that your ship is going to smash on the rocks and break up and that the water is too deep and wild to swim for shore.

  The wind is beginning to whistle. I hear voices, crying out in terror. The Ballantine surges forward on a huge wave and crashes onto the hidden reef. The entire ship judders with the shock. Metal shrieks and rips and grinds as the side of the Ballantine is torn open and the sea pours into her belly. Then the jumble of sound is pierced by human screams.

  “No, Faro! No! I don’t want to hear any more!”

  Immediately the window of memory closes. I’m back in the calm moonlit water, with Faro.

  “You saw it, little sister,” he says with satisfaction. “I wasn’t sure if you would have lost your power, living in the town.”

  I shudder. “How could that wreck be in your memory, Faro? You’re not old enough to remember it.”

  “The memory was passed to me by my ancestors, and so I can pass it on to you.”

  “I wish you hadn’t. I don’t want those memories in my mind. Let’s get away from the wreck.”

  “We can go right away if you want. Will you come deeper into Ingo with me, Sapphire? There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “Who?” My heart leaps. Perhaps—perhaps—could Faro possibly know someone who knows where Dad is?

  “My teacher.”

  “Oh.” I try hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice, but Faro picks it up at once.

  “He is a great teacher,” he says, his voice proud, ready to take offense.

  “I’m sure he is. Um, what’s his name?”

  “Saldowr.”

  “I can’t imagine going to school under the sea. What’s it like?”

  Faro laughs. “We don’t go to school. We learn things when we need to learn them.”

  “I see”—Faro sounds so sure that his way is the right way—“but wouldn’t it be easier just to go to school and learn everything in one place?”

  “I’ve heard about ‘schools.’ Thirty of you young humans together, with only one old human to teach you. All day long in one room.”

  “We move to different classrooms for different lessons,” I say.

  “Hm,” says Faro.

  “We go outside at break and lunchtime.”

  “Human life is very strange,” says Faro slowly and meditatively. “All the young ones together, out of sight in these ‘schools.’ Do you like it, Sapphire?”

  “We have to do it. It’s the law.”

  Faro nods thoughtfully. “I should like to see it. I expect the rooms are very beautiful, or none of you would stay. But Sapphire, come with me to visit my teacher. He wants to meet you.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Not far,” says Faro carelessly. “A little b
eyond the Lost Islands, that’s all. We can be there and back by morning.”

  “Morning!” All of a sudden the image of Sadie floods into my mind. Sadie, tied to an iron pole. She thinks I’m coming back in a few minutes. She’ll be worried already, pointing her nose toward the beach and rising tide, whining anxiously. I see her as clearly as I saw the inside of Faro’s memory. Usually the human world is cloudy when you’re in Ingo, but Sadie’s image is bright and sharp. “I’ve got to get back, Faro.”

  “Don’t worry about the time, Sapphire. Ingo is strong tonight. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I? You felt it. You slipped into Ingo almost before you knew it, and it didn’t hurt at all. Your Mer blood knows that Ingo is strong. Not only strong but happy. Listen, listen, Sapphire. You can hear that Ingo is lowenek.”

  The word beats in my memory. Who said that to me? Of course, it was the dolphins. But they didn’t sound as if they were talking about happiness. It sounded urgent, dangerous. Like a warning.

  “I have to go,” I say. “I must get back to Sadie. I left her tied to a pole by her leash.”

  Faro somersaults through the moonlit water. His body spins in a pattern of light and shadow. When he’s the right way up again, he says, “It seems to me that the one who is tied by a leash is you.”

  “Me!”

  “Yes. You’ve always got to go home. You stay in the shallows. You want to come to Ingo, but as soon as you’re here, you want to go back again. Saldowr needs to speak to you. He has something to tell you.”

  I’m about to snap back when I realize that Faro is sharp because he is hurt. He offered to take me to his teacher, and I refused. The offer must have been important to him. Faro has never spoken to me about his father or his mother. Perhaps he has no parents, and this teacher means a great deal to him.

  “I’m sorry, Faro. I’d like to meet your teacher very much,” I say, “but I can’t tonight, not when I’ve left Sadie tied up.”

  “Hm,” says Faro, sounding a little mollified by my apology. “We’ll see. Saldowr is not like a tame dog, Sapphire. You can’t leave him tied up and return when you feel like it.”

  I stumble out of the water, dripping wet, into the chill of the night. The sea is slapping up to the very top step. As I watch, another wave pounces, and the steps are completely submerged.